Joint analysis of expression levels and histological images identifies genes associated with tissue morphology

Jordan T. Ash, Gregory Darnell, Daniel Munro, Barbara E. Engelhardt

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

Histopathological images are used to characterize complex phenotypes such as tumor stage. Our goal is to associate features of stained tissue images with high-dimensional genomic markers. We use convolutional autoencoders and sparse canonical correlation analysis (CCA) on paired histological images and bulk gene expression to identify subsets of genes whose expression levels in a tissue sample correlate with subsets of morphological features from the corresponding sample image. We apply our approach, ImageCCA, to two TCGA data sets, and find gene sets associated with the structure of the extracellular matrix and cell wall infrastructure, implicating uncharacterized genes in extracellular processes. We find sets of genes associated with specific cell types, including neuronal cells and cells of the immune system. We apply ImageCCA to the GTEx v6 data, and find image features that capture population variation in thyroid and in colon tissues associated with genetic variants (image morphology QTLs, or imQTLs), suggesting that genetic variation regulates population variation in tissue morphological traits.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number1609
JournalNature communications
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2021

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Chemistry(all)
  • Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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